USG representatives hope this year’s Landlord Library will serve as a learning experience for next year’s publication.”There will be a meeting to discuss ways the Landlord Library will be done differently next year,” said Kevin Cope, project coordinator of the Landlord Library. “We need to see what we did right and what we did wrong.”On Feb. 25, USG distributed the Landlord Library to give students advice about off-campus housing. The publication is divided into two parts. The first section gives students hints about living in the campus area. The second section is a survey of landlords and rental companies based on tenants’ opinions. Cope said it would be better to start the survey much earlier in the year.He said the concerns people have over the way the Landlord Library was conducted will be taken into consideration.”Obviously the landlords who got the lower ratings are going to be disgruntled,” he said. “But we did everything we could to ensure fairness.”USG surveyed 1,500 renters in the campus area. Cope said special steps were taken to ensure the results were accurate and represented a true sample.Despite the 400 realty companies and landlords in the university area, Cope said only 40 evaluations were published, because there was insufficient information gathered from tenants of those rentals.Although special precautions were taken to ensure accuracy and fairness, problems inevitably arise, Cope said.”Whenever you do a poll, there is always a margin of error,” he said. “You will never be able to change that.”It’s hard to get a fair sampling of all the residents in the university district,” Cope said.Cope said ample information was collected for the ratings, and these reflected the conditions and management of the rental properties surveyed.Herb Asher, political science professor and polling adviser to USG for the survey, said whenever surveys are done there is cause for speculation.The main problem of the landlord survey is the unequal samples for each landlord and realty company, a factor that concerned USG, Asher said. Samples should have been equal regardless of the number of residents renting from each landlord or realty company.A landlord renting to 200 residents should have the same number of respondents as a landlord renting to 2,000 residents, Asher said.Despite the problems that have occurred with the number of samples, Asher said the Landlord Library was done competently, and special attention was paid to details.Steve McDonald, associate legal counsel in the Office of Legal Affairs, said although he could not comment specifically on the Landlord Library, because he gave legal advice to USG, the survey was not done in a sloppy manner.McDonald said the pages in the front of the Landlord Library adequately explain how readers should use the results.”I think they took great pains to point out the limits,” he said. “They made it clear how to interpret the information.”